Ellen Brown: Oh
yes. That was just an amendment.
Rob Kall: So it was
an amendment that really royally screwed students and depositors, and was a
handout to the bank, eh?
Ellen Brown: Yeah. And other things: it made it that now if you
file for bankruptcy, most cases -- I'm sorry, I don't remember this totally but
- it used to be Chapter 11 I think now its Chapter -- anyway, it used to be you
could just get out of your debts altogether, but now what they do is basically
a refinance: they just extend the debts farther into the future. That definitely helps the banks and it
doesn't help you. It just locks you into
debt forever.
Rob Kall: Yeah. Looks like Charles Grassley was behind this
one. OK.
So lately you've been talking about Cyprus (now that we've got the
definitions out of the way). Tell us
what happened with Cyprus and give us the background and kind of flesh out the
story there -- wait. One more thing,
before we go any further. I want to say
that there is a conference coming up, and I'm going to go. I'm excited about it. I'm going to give a small talk there on
Bottom Up Economics, but you're really the driving force behind that conference. So can you tell us about it, and what it is,
and why people should go, and what's happening there?
Ellen Brown: It's the Public banking Institute Conference
of which I am President and Chairperson.
It's in San Rafael California from June 2nd to 4th. On Sunday Night (you can go just for Sunday
Night, and) it features Matt Taibbi as the main speaker. And then there will be a panel with Birgitta
Jonsdottir, who is the Iceland representative (one of them) who helped block
Iceland from bailing out their big banks, so basically saved the taxpayers from
a burden that would have cripple them for years into the future. And a number of excellent speakers, including
you.
So we have three days of that, and the reason that
it's important is that public banks are really the only safety net in the whole
system. Globally, 40% of banks are
publicly owned, and they're largely in the countries that escaped the credit
crisis. The BRiC countries: Brazil,
Russia, India, and China, which have 40% of the global population. In the US we have one: one state-owned bank,
and that's the bank of North Dakota.
North Dakota is the only state that escaped the credit crisis, that had
a nice surplus every year since 2008.
The bank pays a very nice dividend to the State, the bank funds all
sorts of infrastructure development in the state, they partner with the local
banks, and allow the local banks to take on products that they otherwise
couldn't have taken on. They give very
low interest loans for particular things, like start-up farmers get 1% loans,
and they fund alternative energy, that sort of thing. So they do many great things for the state of
North Dakota.
We feel that every state should have one. Even counties and cities could set up their
own banks. They're particularly in
jeopardy today. Their own funds are in
jeopardy today because of these new "Bail-in" provisions, of which we saw the
first in Cyprus. So I'll get into that. Do you want me to talk about Cyprus?
Rob Kall: Yeah,
absolutely. That's a huge conversation,
and what I understand from what I've been reading in the listeners that you're
involved with, we're at risk! The same
thing could happen here! It's bound to
happen here.
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